By Cheryl Jahn

Major debate over public notices

Aug 16, 2023 | 9:15 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – After a marathon debate that lasted nearly two hours, nothing will change to the way the City advertises its public notices.

Changes were made to the rules, which set out a requirement to publish such notices in the local newspaper, a year ago as a number of municipalities no longer had newspapers.

But Mayor Simon Yu introduced a bylaw amendment during the regular meeting that would include the words “local newspaper” in the wording.

But the debate unfolded into a debate around the importance of journalism versus advertising, with Mayor Yu emphasizing the word “advertising” in the proposed amendment.

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There was also a lot of discussion around getting “bang for our buck” with paying to publish public notices.

There was a number of conversations around the new generation of media and the different means to have public notices published.

Councillor Tim Bennett put forward an amendment that read:

“That Council directs administration to return for Council’s consideration a report including the financial and operational benefits and implications on Council’s consideration of an amendment to the City of Prince George Public Notice Bylaw. 9329, 2022 that includes advertising in local media as a required means of publication for City of Prince George Public Notices in addition to the existing means of “Public Notice Page” and “Facebook Page”.”

That Motion failed and it was back to the original motion, which also failed.